Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics

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Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics

The Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA) in USA is a collaboration between Michigan State University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Chicago to address a broad range of experimental, theoretical, and observational questions in nuclear astrophysics. In the fall of 2003, JINA received a five year grant by the National Science Foundation Physics Frontier Center (PFC) program. This funding offers the opportunity for JINA to develop as an intellectual center with the goal enabling swift communication and stimulating collaborations across field boundaries and at the same time providing a focus point in the rapidly growing and diversifying field of nuclear astrophysics.

Nuclear astrophysics focuses on questions at the interface of nuclear physics and astrophysics. It addresses the role of nuclear structure and nuclear reaction processes as engines of stellar evolution and stellar explosions and seeks to find answers to the fundamental questions about the origin of the elements found today throughout the universe. Because of the extreme nature of the stellar conditions, the understanding of these nuclear processes poses an enormous challenge to astrophysics, nuclear theorists, and experimentalists. Advances in experimental nuclear astrophysics now allow physicists to investigate many stellar processes in the laboratory. These advances span a wide range of techniques and facilities. They include innovative methods to measure the extremely slow reactions in the interiors of stars, as well as new facilities to produce the very same exotic, short-lived nuclei that come to existence in the extreme environments of stellar explosions.

While these experiments are pursued at the accelerator facilities at Notre Dame, Michigan State University, and Argonne National Laboratory, complementary theoretical questions about the macrophysics aspects and conditions of stellar evolution and stellar explosion are addressed by JINA at the University of Chicago, at Notre Dame, and with associated groups at the University of California at Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara, the University of Arizona, Argonne National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory. This component branches towards fundamental understanding of the processes governing life and death of stars as well as to the identification of unique signatures for present and future observation. Close collaboration and exchange of scientists between these institutions is necessary to address the broad and complex range of scientific goals.

JINA will foster an interdisciplinary approach to the open questions in nuclear astrophysics. It will drive further advances in nuclear physics and astrophysics that are specifically needed to answer open questions in nuclear astrophysics, and it will ensure that advances in individual fields will ultimately lead to progress in our understanding of nuclear astrophysics.

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